Father, son
and holy beatles

“Fool on the Hill” by the Beatles had barely finished playing when Father yanked the thin metal arm from the vinyl disc circling endlessly on the turntable of the portable record player he had borrowed from the principal’s office, where it was kept in a closet under lock and key.

He carefully set the delicate diamond needle on its holder before turning to the class. From my seat I could see the record going round and round.

“So, what do you think it means? Who’s the fool on the hill?”

Father surveyed the class. No one moved. Puzzled faces stared blankly at him. We were waiting for him to give us the answer. We weren’t used to being asked our opinion. Especially in religion class of all places.

We also weren’t accustomed to a priest encouraging us to listen to rock music. Rock was the devil’s instrument. The Rolling Stones had made that perfectly clear by invoking Satan in album titles and song lyrics. The only time rock played anywhere in the building was at the Saturday night dances in the old gym. The disc jockey who sat in the booth loading the 45s on the turntable was instructed by the priest in charge to play groups such as the Supremes or the Association. No Rolling Stones or Beatles. No psychedelic music. “Middle of the road” was definitely the aim, though that term hadn’t been coined yet.

This was not the Saturday night dance. This was uncharted territory. It was only the second week of the new semester, my senior year. The mid-September Indian summer was making the room unbearably hot. The last place on earth I wanted to be was in a stuffy classroom with a priest who thought he was Mr. Liberal. Father had a thick foreign accent and kept his hair longer than any other faculty member. I had not seen him around the school before. He was probably new. What if he were trying to trick us in some way, get us to say things that could later be used against us?

You couldn’t be too careful at Bishop Neumann High School. The Enlightenment had missed the school altogether. The U.S. Constitution meant nothing. The priests could open our lockers or book bags at any time. They could even strip search us if they wanted. They certainly employed corporal punishment and torture. How many times had I seen classmates forced to hold up heavy books in the corner, or struck repeatedly in the back of the legs with a wooden ruler? My Latin teacher, Father Karate Chops, as I nicknamed him, had thrown me against a blackboard for whispering something to the guy sitting next to me. I had been kicked off the student newspaper for constantly submitting articles against the Vietnam war that the editor refused to publish. I was told by the priest in charge that freedom of the press was not a right given to us by the Bible.

“I know you have opinions,” Father said, pacing slowly in the front of the room. The front and back of his black shirt were spotted with sweat marks. His forehead and the sides of his face were beaded with moisture. He kept wiping it off with a handkerchief that he stuffed in the back pocket of his pants. Unlike most of the other clergy, he never wore a collar. He was also sporting sandals, the trademark foot wear of hippies.

After a long silence, Father pointed to a short thin Irish student in the front row. “You. What do you think?”

The kid shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean? You honestly don’t have an opinion, or you’re too scared to tell me what it is? I’m not going to bite your head off, trust me, all opinions are valued in this classroom.”

“Uh, I don’t know, Father, really.”

“Okay. You don’t have to say anything.” He glanced around the room. “You know, if the fool were sitting up on a hill overlooking say Washington, D.C., what would he see? A lot is happening in the country today. Can somebody tell me about some of the things that the fool would see on that hill?” He waited for a reaction. Nothing. Just a sea of still-puzzled faces. “Does anybody here, uh, watch the news or read the newspapers?”

A few hands began to rise hesitantly.

“Good. Name one of the top stories in the papers.”

Someone knew the answer right away: An Italian student with horn-rimmed glasses and thick black eyebrows that met in the center of his forehead. He was wearing a striped shirt that didn’t match his plaid suit jacket. His face was riddled with acne scars. He seemed to have a permanent sneer on his lips.

“Yes? You don’t have to wait for permission. Speak your mind.”

“The war.”

“Which war?”

Horn-Rimmed Glasses shrugged his shoulders, “There’s only one war, right?”

“Is there?”

“Yeah, in Vietnam.” He was suddenly not so sure of his answer.

“What about what’s happening in the south?” Father pointed to one of only two black kids in the class.

The student, who sat near the front of the room, had hair shaved close to his head and almond-shaped dark eyes. He was husky and tall, with hands that seemed designed to play a piano. He was planning to be a science major in college. “You mean desegregation, Father?”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, everybody knows about it.”

“I don’t,” Father replied. “I’m not from this country. You’ve probably noticed that from my accent. Describe it to me.”

I wondered if Father was serious about not knowing about integration. How could anyone not know about that? The kid began explaining about the civil rights movement and the fight to desegregate schools and lunch counters. He talked eloquently about Martin Luther King and the amazing work he did organizing a movement to fight against racial discrimination.

“Don’t you think there’s a war against black people in this country?”

“Yeah, there is.” He felt for sure that’s what Father wanted to hear. “There’s still a lot of prejudice in this country. Black people are still being discriminated against.”

“So you think the fool would see racial discrimination from the top of that hill in D.C.?”

“Yeah, sure. Lots of it.”

I was beginning to think that I had been wrong about Father. Though he was trying his best to be hip and with it, as we said, he seemed genuinely sincere. Maybe he did believe in the values that young people stood for. He was from another country. Perhaps the church was more liberal where he came from. It was going to be a great school year if all we had to do was listen to rock music and give our opinions about the lyrics.

“So the fool sees racial discrimination. What about poverty? Isn’t there a lot of poverty in America?” Father looked at a heavyset Italian student with a Charlie Brown face and curly dark hair. He nodded and looked nervously at the priest.

Charlie Brown couldn’t think of anything to say except, “Yeah, there is.”

“The fool would see a lot of poor people?”

Charlie Brown nodded.

“To take it to another level--Who thinks there’s a war against the poor in this country?”

Two hands darted up. One of the boy was enthusiastically waving his, desperate to get Father’s attention. He succeeded.

“What do you think?” Father asked as he walked over to our self-professed Sicilian radical whose greatest heroes were Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the anarchists he believed were falsely put to death for the murder of a paymaster and his guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts in the 1920’s. Every Columbus Day, he wished everyone a happy “Sacco and Vanzetti Day.” When he graduated, he planned to join the Students for a Democratic Society and start the revolution that was going to overthrow capitalism. He was short and stocky with hair that couldn’t make its mind up as to whether it wanted to be straight or wavy. He had a heavy five o’clock shadow, even at 10am. He always carried a copy of the Communist Manifesto and quoted from it often. The consensus in school was that he was the student most likely to end up as a drugged-out hippie in the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco.

“I think there’s a lotta poverty cause we live in a capitalistic society,” our Marxist said proudly and without hesitation.

“Hmm, and what does that mean?”

“It means a few guys with a lotta money control most of the wealth.”

“You sound like you’ve been doing a little reading on the subject.”

“I have.” He smiled. He looked around the room for approval. There was none.

“So the fool would see a lot of poverty in America?”

“He’d see that the wealth needs to be redistributed.”

“That’s a serious challenge. How do you propose to do that?”

Marxist began to outline his plan. Father kept interrupting with questions. He didn’t seem judgmental at all. He came off genuinely inquisitive. I wanted to jump into the discussion, but was so mesmerized by the ease with which Father engaged what would, in any other classroom, be a forbidden topic that I decided to just watch and listen. I suspected Father would cut off debate when Marxist got too carried away, as he always did, but he didn’t. Marxist had his moment in the spotlight and he was going to get in every word that he could. The conversation wound down on its own, with both Father and the Marxist agreeing that massive social change was needed to address problems such as poverty.

“That was very good. Hope you all learned something. It’s not everyday that you get to hear from someone with a different viewpoint like that.” Little did Father know that Marxist lectured us daily whenever he could. He hardly kept his opinions to himself. “So back to my original question, who is John Lennon singing about in that song?”

Hands shot high into the air. A lot of kids suddenly had opinions. They answered with confidence, trying to outdo each other.

“It’s Jesus.”

“It’s Buddha.”

“It’s John Lennon himself.” That answer got a lot of nods from other students.

“And you?” Father looked at me. I hadn’t raised my hand yet. Which was unusual. I was often one of the first to express my feelings.

I hesitated, then cleared my throat. I had been thinking a lot about what I was going to say. I realized that I had never really understood the lyrics of that song. I knew it was about a guy sitting on a hill seeing through a lot of the world’s bullshit. But it was deeper than that.

“Since John Lennon wrote it and he’s an atheist,” I began and paused. That word had so much weight in religion class that I put special emphasis on it to see how Father would react. He didn’t flinch. How would he feel if he knew that I had decided the year before that God didn't exist anymore than Zeus did? A friend had given me a copy of Sartre's No Exit and it had changed my life forever. I stopped going to Mass and Confession.

“And? Continue,” Father said nonchalantly.

“Well, I don’t think he’s singing about Jesus or Buddha. I think it’s about all of us. Like if everyone’s telling me that I gotta join the Army and go kill people in Vietnam and I say no, then I’m feeling like that guy sitting on the hill.”

“Good point. How do the rest of you feel about that? Are we all the fool on the hill?”

“Lennon ain’t no a-tiest!” It was the kid with the dark-rimmed glasses. He was annoyed. “No one in their right mind would be!”

Father smiled. “But he says he is. He even said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Which is probably true. Jesus wasn’t followed everywhere he went by throngs of screaming girls. He should’ve been, but he wasn’t. Maybe if he and the Apostles played guitars.” He paused. He was pleased with himself. Some of the kids weren’t too thrilled that Father seemed to be siding with me.

“A-tiests are bad people,” an Italian kid with green eyes and olive skin said.

“Why’s that?”

“Cause they don’t believe in God.”

“Interestingly enough, Lennon’s songs are very spiritual, even though he doesn’t believe in God,” Father said.

“I don’t think they’re spiritual.” It was the Marxist.

“Then what are they?”

“He’s advocating revolution. He even wrote a song called revolution. He’s a Marxist.”

“But the revolution song is critical of Marxists.”

“No. Maoists. He’s down on them.”

“Can you be a Marxist and still be spiritual?”

“Marxists are atheists.”

“Are you an atheist?”

“I don’t know if I’d call myself an atheist...” Mr. revolutionary wasn’t brave enough to admit it. He had better sense than I did.

“I’m an atheist.” I blurted out. I had become so relaxed by the discussion that I didn’t even think before I said it.

Father waited a couple beats before answering, “Are you really an atheist?”

“Yeah.” I knew immediately I had said something wrong. Father didn’t seem too upset, though.

“Do you know what the word means?”

“Course I do.”

He obviously didn’t believe me. Or he was trying to give me a chance to reconsider and back down. “It means that you don’t believe in a God. You don’t even believe in the possibility of a god. It’s different than being an agnostic where you leave open the possibility that a supreme being might exist. Are you more of an agnostic, perhaps?”

“This whole discussion’s crazy!” That was a skinny blond Irish kid with rosy cheeks and narrow brown eyes.

“It’s not crazy,” I said. “There’s no proof of a god. That’s why Lennon’s singing about the “Fool” on the Hill. This person’s up there on that mountain seeing the truth about everything including God and nobody believes him. They think he’s a fool, but actually they’re the fools!”

“Like you? You think you’re the fool on the hill?” It was Horn-Rimmed Glasses. He laughed. “Well, you’re a fool all right.”

“Hold on, class,” Father said. “So, you don’t think that there’s any proof that god exists?”

“Absolutely not,” I said. Pushing the envelop was fun. I didn’t care what the kids in class thought about me. And I certainly didn’t mind making Father uncomfortable. Trouble was, he was good at maintaining his calm. I wish I knew how he was really feeling. Panicked that a student had taken things this far? Perhaps I was flattering myself. Father came off cool as a cucumber.

“Man, you’re sick,” a tall kid with a long pointy nose and thick pouty lips said. Bored with most of his studies, he usually sat in the back of the room and drew caricatures of fellow students. “If you don’t believe in God, then you don’t believe in nothing. And that’s pretty bad.”

“Hold on now. Everybody’s got a right to their opinion.” To me, Father said: “There’s no proof that God doesn’t exist.”

“Checkmate. You can’t prove he exists and I can’t prove he doesn’t.”

The Marxist laughed. “He’s got you there, Father.” Students began talking amongst themselves.
“One conversation at a time.” Father snapped. I wasn’t sure if he was becoming annoyed at me or at my classmates who were speaking out of turn. The class quieted down. “Look at the incredible things in the world--nature, the stars at night, the rich variety of animal and plant life. The fact that we can think and dream. How could those things come into being without some sort of divine intervention?”

“Big bang. An accident. Evolution.”

“Not enough.”

“Have you ever read Fred Hoyle’s big bang theory?”

“No.”

“Then how can you say it’s not enough. Have you read Darwin?”

“Of course.”

“It explains everything.”

“They’re only theories...”

“Based on research and science.”

“And faith.”

“There’s some faith. But your religion is all faith and no science.”

“My religion is your religion.”

“I’m an atheist, remember?” I was getting bolder by the minute. The Marxist was in seventh heaven. Horn-Rimmed Glasses had his hand up and was desperately trying to get Father’s attention.

“You’re still a Catholic.”

“Not really.”

“Yes, you are, you nitwit!” Horn-Rimmed yelled.

“You’re in Catholic school,” Father said, holding out his hand to quiet down Horn-Rimmed.

“Not by my choice.”

“You go to Mass, Confession...”

“Can I plead the fifth?” I asked, smiling.

The Marxist laughed. “Way to go,” he said. He no doubt regretted that it was me and not him who had taken on Father.

“I suspect you’re not taking this discussion seriously.”

“How could I? It’s absurd. What’s it prove to bring Beatle records in here and act all hip when you don’t wanna hear what we’re really thinking. You don’t wanna hear how I feel about Catholicism or the Pope or even Catholic school. You’d probably expel me if I told you.”

“That’s what you deserve!” It was Horn-Rimmed.

“Speak your mind, brother!” Marxist shouted to me. “Freedom of speech.”

“Enough of that!” Father said to the Marxist. He took a deep breathe. “There’s a line that has to be drawn. I can’t allow chaos in this class. This is not anarchy.”

“The music you’ve been playing today is about rebellion and questioning. It doesn’t belong in a religion class. If Lennon had his way, there’d be no religion. I feel the same way.”

“You understand that with freedom comes responsibility...”

“That’s not freedom then.”

“So you can do or say anything you want and there shouldn’t be consequences?”

“There’s always consequences. When you open Pandora’s Box, like you did today, be prepared for what’s in there.”

I could tell that Father was angry. He wasn't the type to explode. “See me after class,” he said, going over to the record player. “Now let’s listen to another song.” He put on “Eleanor Rigby.” I kept my mouth shut during that discussion and Father didn’t call on me. Horn-Rimmed was making a point about Father MacKenzie being a Christ figure, when the bell rang.

I was still sitting at my desk after everyone left the classroom. It was my last class of the day and I wanted to get home. Father didn’t say anything. He turned off the record player, closed the lid, then erased the board with slow methodical strokes. Finally he walked over to my desk.

“I want you to clean up the room. There’s a broom in the closet over there. There’s probably some gum under the desktops that needs to be scraped off.”

“What did I do?”

“I just need a helper, someone to tidy up afterwards, that’s all. You can also carry this record player back to the Principal’s office when you’re through.”

“I’m being punished for my opinions?”

“You’re being taught that there's a higher power."

I couldn't argue with that.

The funniest thing I did that summer was to look for a job.

My friends swore I was unemployable. After all, my previous work experience, in addition to pumping gas and washing cars at my father’s gas station, was collecting old newspapers and bottles from neighbors to bring to the junk yard.

My only real expertise was freaking people out on the streets by walking around in genderfuck. I made blurring the line between masculine and feminine an art and a science (Start with foundation, draw a star under the eye, add...). An activist friend told me I was “walking street theatre.” She said I should charge people for the entertainment. Hardly something I could put on my resume.

Going for job interviews dressed as a cross between Boy George and Kiss was more than challenging. It was an exercise in futility. Openings suddenly slammed shut, personnel directors got lock jaw and secretaries asked me where I bought that incredible blue eye shadow with a touch of glitter in it.

I was beginning to feel like I had a starring role in Mission Impossible when I spotted a hand-written flyer on the bulletin board of the neighborhood Post Office. The store seeking help was located inside a huge warehouse that had recently been turned into a shopping mall. The individual stores were lined up on either side of a wide main aisle that was paved in black and white tiles. Flimsy walls separated the individual businesses. They rose three-quarters of the height to the high ceiling that had exposed wooden beams and pipes of varying widths. Every few feet, florescent light fixtures hung on heavy metal chains. My destination, the record store, was sandwiched between Linens and Camera Supplies.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went in to ask for an application. To my surprise, I got hired on the spot. I didn’t even need to fill out any paperwork. Only a yellow index card with my name, address and phone number. The store was owned by two hippies. The store manager, Joe, was a straight white stoner with long dark hair who thought everything was “sooo cool, man.” To him, my style of dress was the ultimate in glitter rock. It was as if David Bowie’s musical alter ego had come to work for him. He dubbed me “Tony Stardust Dude.”

“You part of a rock band?” he asked me as I filled out the card.

I didn’t look up. “Nope. I’m my own act.”

“I can see that. I like it.”

A sharp contrast to the first time Mr. Kettle, the white mall manager, saw me at the register. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, his entire face turning a deep chili pepper red.

“Tony.”

“What the hell’re you dressed for? The Circus? I wanna talk to Joe.”

I paged him and Joe came out from the stock room. Was I going to get fired already? I wondered if that would be a Guinness Book record: Dismissed after less than an hour on the job.

“You can’t allow your employees to dress like that,” Kettle told my manager.

“Why not? It’s his choice.”

“This is a family store. If someone wants to prance around in a tutu that’s his own damn business, but not while he’s working here!”

“That’s not very democratic.”

“Don’t give me that crazy hippie talk. I want him in appropriate clothing tomorrow or he’s fired.”

“Uh, you can’t fire my employees.”

“Then I’ll talk to your bosses.” He walked off.

“Don’t pay attention to him,” Joe said, going back to his work.

Joe never called the owners, but Mr. Kettle did. They told him in so many words to mind his own business. Mr. Kettle had to get used to the idea of having a gender bender behind the register at the record store. Which might have been possible except that my friends visited me almost nightly. They didn’t all dress wildly, but they got on Mr. Kettle’s nerves nonetheless. He began watching our department like a hawk. He’d stand in the aisle and stare when someone was talking to me at the register. “Don’t you have work to do?” he’d ask.

“I’m minding the register.”

“You need company to do that? Maybe I should order some tea and crumpets, too?”

If the friend were dressed outrageously, he’d quip, “Another of your circus friends?”

So it wasn’t the best idea for Arnold, my African American boyfriend, to come in one night and serenade me with a love song. Arnold was a professional singer and did musicals at local theatres. He could belt them out with the best of them. His professional friends didn’t call him “Ethel” for nothing.

Arnold was almost finished his ballad when along came Mrs. Tee, the African American woman who headed up security. A small crowd had gathered to hear Arnold. They were wondering who he was. “What group’s he with?” some people asked.

“Uh, what is going on?” Mrs. Tee asked, as Arnold took his bow. The crowd applauded, then began to wander off to do their shopping.

“Oh, Hi, Mrs. Tee, this is my boyfriend, Arnold...” I had never spoken to her before. I had heard that you didn’t mess with Mrs. Tee. She was a big woman with a stern face and short cropped hair. She wore small clip-on earrings that looked like they were family heirlooms and a plain brown dress that hung to her knees. On her feet were sensible black pumps.

“Hello, Mrs. Tee,” Arnold said and extended his hand to shake hers. She hesitated, then returned the gesture.

“You can’t go around singing in the store, Arnold. If Mr. Kettle...”

“Sorry, you’re right,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

“You do have a beautiful voice, though,” she said to him, smiling.

“You should come and see me at the TLA. I’ll comp you.”

“I think I’ll do that.” Since the crowd had dispersed, she walked off to check out things in the rest of the store.

When Arnold left, Mrs. Tee came back over to my register. “He’s a very nice young man. And good looking, too.”

“I agree.”

“You like him a lot, huh?” I nodded. Obviously she was anything but shy. I didn’t mind. I figured it was the only way to educate straights, and if by some chance she was one of Dorothy’s friends, then I might be helping her come to terms with her own feelings.

“Where did you guys meet, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“At a gay conference at Temple University.” Temple, the local state-funded college, was a hotbed of leftist political activity, including anti-war, feminist and gay groups. It was where working-class kids like myself got a higher education.

Mrs. Tee spotted Mr. Kettle coming down the aisle. “Gotta go.”

Mr. Kettle gave me a suspicious look. “Is anything wrong here?”

“Nope.”

He walked off to catch up to Mrs. Tee.

Sometimes I went days without any interaction with Mr. Kettle, which was fine by me. Mrs. Tee, on the other hand, always came by to talk. If I went to the food counter for something to drink, she’d sit on the stool next to me. She asked a lot of questions. How did I know I was “that way?” What did my parents think? What about Arnold’s parents? She was also curious to know about where gays went to meet each other. I became convinced that Mrs. Tee had a secret that Mr. Tee didn’t know about. Was there even a Mr. Tee? I asked her one day and she said he was dead. That cinched it for me. I decided I was going to get her to come out. How I would do that, I didn’t know. Maybe I would just ask her. I planned to do it on more than one occasion, but always chickened out at the last moment.

One night, three rowdy drag queens, two white and one black, came into the store dishing the dirt a mile a minute and at decibels that sent their voices cascading throughout the mall. They passed my register and headed for the Women’s Department, which was across the aisle and a little to the left. Every eye in the store was on them as they checked out the selections on the racks and chattered loudly among themselves. I had seen them hanging out at Day’s Deli where many queens held court while nursing a coffee and a croissant. I didn’t know their names. When one of the white queens went into the women’s dressing room to try on something, Mr. Kettle was summoned by a sales clerk who didn’t know what to do.

Mr. Kettle stopped at my register on his way to the women’s department.

“Friends of yours?”

“Nope. Never saw them before.”

“And if I have my way, you’ll never see them in this store again,” Mr. Kettle said. Mrs. Tee approached from Linens where she had been checking out a group of kids who were hanging out near the back.

“Get ‘em the hell outa my damn store! Now!” Kettle screamed to his security chief as he stomped off to the women’s dressing room. I got Joe to cover the register and followed Mr. Kettle and Mrs. Tee as they left on their mission of eradicating bad influences from our “family store.”

“They’re not bothering nobody,” Miss Tee said.

“I don’t care, I want them outa my store!”

“Mr. Kettle, you need to go to the office and take your high blood pressure medicine. I got everything under control.”

“If you had everything under control you wouldn’t’ve let them come in.”

“What am I supposed to do, ban all people who don’t dress the way you think they should?”

When they arrived at the dressing room, Mr. Kettle banged on the door with his fist. “Come outa there right this minute!” The queen peeked out.

“You have no right to be in there.”

“I’m buying this dress. You like?” The queen opened the door and modeled it for him.

“It’s very nice,” Mrs. Tee said.

“Is there a problem?” one of the other queens asked.

“Everything’s fine,” Mrs. Tee said.

“Everything’s not fine. I can’t have this in my store. You three will have to leave immediately. Or I’m calling the cops.”

“Nobody’s going nowhere,” Mrs. Tee countered. “Now, if you want that dress, fine. If you girls want to look some more, that’s okay, too. I’m head of security. I think Mr. Kettle is overreacting.”

“Good,” said the black queen, “cause I’d sure hate to go to the Human Rights Commission first thing tomorrow morning to file a complaint about discrimination.”

“I wanna see you in my office when you’re done here,” Mr. Kettle said to Mrs. Tee before taking off.

“Now ladies, go back to your shopping. Sorry for the interruption. And the rest of you,” she said to the onlookers, “mind your own business. The show’s over.”

Mrs. Tee obviously had no problem holding her own against Mr. Kettle. I learned that in an even bigger way a few days later. I was about to go on dinner break when Arnold paid me a surprise visit. We grabbed something from the lunch counter and headed into the stock room. It was crowded with sale items that didn’t fit on the display shelves and empty boxes that needed to be broken down. Fortunately we had enough room to eat in the front near Joe’s desk. We set down our food and placed two folding chairs side by side.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

“Oh, nothing, I was lonely. I miss you.”

“It’s only been four hours...”

“I know. C’mere.” I sat in his lap and we kissed for a while. We fed each other French Fries in between smooches. There wasn’t much light so it felt real private.

It wasn’t. “What’s going on in here?” a voice asked. I jumped into the other chair.

“Uh, Mr. Kettle! Sorry, I’m on my dinner break.”

“Obviously not doing what you’re supposed to be doing. I wanna see you in my office now. And get him outa here, only employees’re allowed in stock rooms.”

I must have been shaking visibly, sitting there in front of Mr. Kettle’s desk. I had only been in the office once before, when I had to bring him some paperwork from Joe. I couldn’t afford to lose my job. It was helping to pay my way through college, which was keeping me out of the draft.

Our union stewart, Gladys, a thin black woman with a missing tooth in the front of her mouth, was seated to my right. She was shaking her head. “I’m not saying that I approve of what he was doing, but there ain’t nothing you can do about it, Mr. Kettle. He was on his own time.”

Gladys wore an elegant gray skirt and a red blouse. Her lips were painted bright pink and her cheeks were smeared with too much rouge. She held on to a plain black purse with a gold snap, sometimes opening and closing it for no apparent reason.

“But he was in my stock room.”

“Correction. He was in the stock room that you’re renting to the record store,” Gladys replied. “If they want to do something to him, that’s different. They’ll still be subject to union rules, though.”

“Those damn hippies won’t do nothing. You know that. I want something done--tonight. I’m not fooling around this time. He’s had enough chances. He just doesn’t care about what anybody thinks, he just does what he wants. It stops right here and now.”

“It’s not like he was doing it where people could see...” Mrs. Tee suddenly said. She was standing near the door with her arms folded over her chest as if she were keeping watch. She had been silent up to that point, as I had been. I figured that it was best I not speak until someone asked me a question.

“Weren’t you listening to me? I don’t care. I want him outa here!” Kettle shouted. “I’ve been putting up with this nonsense since that record store opened. If it isn’t the loud obnoxious music that they play that gives everybody a headache, then it’s the way they dress and behave. They just don’t have any common sense over there.”

“You can’t do it, goddamn it. You heard Gladys! What’re you deaf or something? Now, you stop this bullshit right this minute!” She had raised her voice to Mr. Kettle before, but never used language like that. Nobody raised their voice to Kettle, let alone cussed him. He shot her a disapproving look. She glared back at him.

“Then what do you suggest I do, Mrs. Tee?” Mr. Kettle asked in a quieter voice.

“Nothing.”

He got louder. “So he can just go on doing whatever he wants, wherever he wants and whenever he wants?”

“Welcome to America.”

“It’s got nothing to do with that. It’s got to do with human decency. You can’t possibly approve of what he’s doing?!”

“Maybe I do.”

“What? Are you nuts?”

“Mr. Kettle, you don’t seem to understand that some of us don’t agree with your outdated attitudes about things.” She paused. “I’ve been keeping my mouth shut for a long time.”

“Mrs. Tee, don’t say something you might later...”

“I ain’t gonna regret saying nothing,” she interrupted. “It’s about time somebody said these things. The truth is, Mr. Kettle, I had a brother who was like that. He was the sweetest guy you ever wanted to meet. He didn’t harm nobody. You hear me? He didn’t do nothing to nobody. He wasn’t in no gang, he didn’t do no drugs. He liked to dress in women’s clothes and put on makeup and go out dancing on weekends. Everybody liked him. They didn’t understand why he did what he did, but they knew he was a good kid. Some people judged him. They got all righteous about God and the Bible. That was their thing. I never argued with them. What was the point? Now I wish I had. I should’ve said something. When those ladies came in the other night, I saw my brother. He would’ve come in here like that, all sassy and proud. Sometimes he loved to get a good rise outa people, you know what I mean? And why not? It didn’t do nobody no harm. It might’ve shook them up a little bit, but that’s okay.” She stopped. Her jaw became tighter, her lips quivered. She seemed as if she were about to cry. “Do you know what they did? They killed him, Mr. Kettle. They left him in an alley all bloodied and broken...the police ain’t never arrested nobody for it.”

“I’m sorry...” It was the first time I ever heard anything vaguely resembling compassion from Mr. Kettle.

“Sorry ain’t enough. You gotta do more than be sorry. You gotta open up your heart and let the understanding in. I know it ain’t easy. But you gotta do it. And don’t ask me to judge cause I won’t. I don’t know why people’re the way my brother was, and I don’t care. They just are. That’s good enough for me.”

“Amen, sister.” It was Gladys. She was smiling.

“Now if you got something to say that isn’t about your own problem with gay people, then I suggest you say it. Otherwise, Gladys, Tony and I got work to do.”

“Just get the hell outa here,” Kettle murmured.

We didn’t argue.

originally published at sanfranciscosentinel.com
© 2004